First, Utah's defense is exceptional. They really are. They are now 11th in total defense in the nation. And that's with an offense that provides them no help and consistently puts them in bad situations. They could be 4th or 5th this year if they had an offense that did anything, and KW didn't have a man crush on every punter that has ever punted. I think from a talent, coaching, scheme standpoint, they're a top 5 defense.

Second, RES is a really tough place to play. Jake was asked after the game if the noise impacted the team and he said he was shocked by how how loud it was. They'd practiced with noise, but it still impacts (especially in the rivalry game).

Now... I went back and watched every Utah defensive snap from our game AND from their Houston and Arizona games. Some observations...

Third, the substitution thing. They do the late subbing thing A LOT. Depending on how you count it, it's 12-15 times a game. It really really impacts offensive flow, get's guys frustrated before the play and not focusing on doing their job, but instead frustrated with the subbing. So...even if you get the play off, it still impacts the play in a negative way for the offense. I hate it so much. I'd love to see an analysis of the results of a play when Utah does a late substitution. It's not good. It dramatically negatively impacts the offense. BTW I LOVE that Kalani did it to them a couple of times. I honestly don't know how you stop it. The rules clearly allow for a defensive substitution and don't dictate when they subbing needs to be done.

Fourth, they induce the offense to false start 18 times a game. Let's be clear about what I mean...in loud environments when the center can't hear, the RG usually does a hand gesture so the C knows when the QB is ready for the snap. The RG (or LG) will stick his arm out and pump it so the C knows the QB is ready. The C sees this out of his peripheral vision and snaps the ball. The other lineman (even though they're not supposed to) will use this as a trigger to leave a split second early and get a jump on the play. You'll see this in in the NFL a lot too. It's standard.

So what does Utah do? Well, one of their DTs lined up to the right or left of our C would do the arm motion that our OL RG typically does. To be clear: the defense doing this arm motion to induce a false start IS ILLEGAL AND SHOULD BE A PENALTY.

Now, you may say 'Well, clearly it's not the RG doing it, why would that cause our guys to jump?

The answer is because of chaos. It's noisy, you're tired, the game is on the line, and you're reacting to a peripheral vision of the that hand movement. So you jump.

That's what happened on the last drive of the game when we got the False Start that moved us back 5 yards before the FG attempt. Utah's DT did the hand gesture (in that case, it was the guy slightly to the left of the center), someone on the line moved, and we go back 5 yards.

If you watch the play, Kalani goes INSANE on the sideline. Utah did that 18 times throughout the game and caused us to have those false starts.

It's an illegal play, but you rarely see it called (likely because the refs will say it's impossible to tell if they are inducing the false start or just moving their arm in a natural way).

I repeat, Utah did it 18 times against us. They did it 14 against Arizona at RES. To be clear, this doesn't work on the road, and it doesn't work when it's not loud, but when it's loud and a team is on a silent count, it works.

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Add these 4 things up + the intensity of a rivalry and you have a BYU offense that was out of sorts and a Utah team that had no business being in that game with us.

The 4th thing on that list and should be solved immediately. Every time a DL does that, throw a flag. It'll stop pretty quickly.